Quirky auteur Wes Anderson appears to have built up a full head of steam after winning over critics and audiences alike last summer with the Oscar-nominated Moonrise Kingdom, his gentle storybook indie feature. No sooner had he closed the books on that film than he began working on his next production, the Euro-centric film The Grand Budapest Hotel, which has been picked up for distribution by Fox Searchlight – and received a logline to boot.

Anderson assembled his superb cast this past November and wrapped up shooting in January of this year. Now, he’s reunited with the studio four years after they released his stop-motion picture, Fantastic Mr. Fox, in 2009; they’ll also be providing additional financial backing for The Grand Budapest Hotel hotel in tandem with production company Indian Paintbrush.

The announcement of this team-up bears tantalizing fruit. Notably, Fox Searchlight may be reconsidering the movie’s initially projected late 2014 release; it appears that they’re thinking about a late 2013 release instead – though that’s far from a guarantee, and viewers could still end up waiting almost two years for The Grand Budapest Hotel‘s theatrical run.

More importantly, though, we now know details of the film’s plot, courtesy of The Playlist. So without further ado:

The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

Ralph Fiennes in ‘Coriolanus’

At first blush, this makes The Grand Budapest Hotel sound like the most ambitious film of Anderson’s career. He’s summoned a massive cast to see out his vision here – including leading man Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Saoirse Ronan (who could possibly play Fiennes’ “young protégé”), Tom Wilkinson, Mathieu Amalric, F. Murray Abraham, Bob Balaban and Tony Revolori – but he’s led large casts through small, intimate stories in his other movies. The Grand Budapest Hotel, on the other hand, has scope and scale – at least if we go by that synopsis.

Those “upheavals” almost certainly refer to WWII; Law revealed not too long ago that the film will occur in the 1930s and 60s, so it seems logical that the Second World War will shape events of the plot in big, broad ways. Will Anderson attempt to recreate the Siege of Budapest onscreen? That sounds like something far outside his purview as a filmmaker, but the descriptions here suggest that historic event could be part of the film’s backdrop.

As to the rest: it sounds like pure Anderson, with family feuds and capers filling out the rest of his narrative. Combined with the recurring cast members, it should be more than enough to excite his fans.

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Screen Rant will keep you up to date on new developments over The Grand Budapest Hotel as they become available.